Somebody writes “Participatory Networks: The American Library Associations Office for Information Technology Policy commissioned the Information Institute of Syracuse to write a technology brief about the growing use of social networks and new web technologies for the library community.
The Institute produced an initial draft and posted it to the web for feedback from the library community (you can see the original draft here and some of the discussion here).
The final technology brief was released at ALA’s Midwinter meeting. It can be downloaded here. Also part of this site is an experimental participatory system, inspired by if:book, a project of The Institute for the Future of the Book (http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/) that lets users comment directly on the text of the final brief.
The initial draft and participatory concepts have generated a great deal of interest and enthusiasm. It is the authors intention for this site to become a sort of central point for the evolution and development of participatory librarianship.”
Anything But the Word ‘Conversation’!
I wish they hadn’t used the word ‘Conversation’ in the title of their report (“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation”). It’s probably one of the most abused words in the English language.
It drives me nuts when people use it for absolutely everything under the sun. Mentally I had to replace it with the word ‘burp’ just to get through the thing.